Why The Hobbit makes me laugh out loud (the book)

Added: 2026-05-11

[00:00:00]I've always had a perception of authors that they are all dead serious.

[00:00:04]Hemingway, I don't know if he ever smiled in his life. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Chekhov, they all look like they brush their teeth with vodka and they step around really crunchy leaves.

[00:00:15]>> [music] >> And still to this day I am haunted by that picture of Shel Silverstein in the back of his books. Yeah, you know what picture I mean. I don't even have to show it on the screen to have you know what I mean. But just for kicks, look at this man. This guy has been a murderer in four past lives and he just writes children's stories in this one.

[00:00:34]The same goes for people like J.R.R.

[00:00:36]Tolkien, whom the majority of this channel is all about. But as difficult as it is for us to shed the understanding of some of these writers that they are stolid and stoic and stalwart in their emotions and their ability to not smile, J.R.R. Tolkien, I'm finding through his writing, was anything but that. In fact, this man was a man who seemed to delight in the ability to make people laugh. Tolkien could honestly run a children's program today that would have the kids rolling around on the floor in hysterics.

[00:01:06]>> [music] >> And it's because he knows all about the importance of absurdist humor.

[00:01:11]There is yet another reason why I think children's books and children's book authors are some of the most gifted writers of all time. They are writers who understand the craft and the psychology of those that they are writing for.

[00:01:25]Because the humor of The Hobbit's first two chapters isn't accidental, it's really structural. Tolkien uses absurdist humor, the kind of humor that kind of legit legitimately makes you stop reading and cackle, and he uses this deliberately to build a world that feels epic and ridiculous at the same time. And the comedy is doing the real narrative work here. Now, I'm talking about the first two chapters alone because that's all I have read so far. I'm obsessed with Tolkien just from having read The Lord of the Rings for the first time and talked about him on this channel throughout the last few months.

[00:01:56]I am obsessed and I think The Hobbit is taking a very different place up in my heart than The Lord of the Rings.

[00:02:03]Because The Lord of the Rings is a much more serious tale.

[00:02:06]Sure, it has elements of humor to it that kind of make you chuckle a little bit, but The Hobbit has that stuff on every page and almost every paragraph.

[00:02:13]And on my channel, I am reading the books aloud, which I am fully convinced that they were meant to be read aloud.

[00:02:20]And I cannot tell you what a joy it is to turn every page and be able to read this.

[00:02:25]This was meant for parents to read to their children at bedtime, and for the children to laugh themselves to sleep.

[00:02:32]Even the second chapter is one of the greatest lessons that any author has ever taught, that there are trolls, and they're not all that scary. That the sun can get them, and they're just really dumb creatures with names like William, Bert, and Tom, and things like that.

[00:02:46]Talking is just having kids laugh at things that they might be afraid of, and therefore overcome their fear. But I am getting a little ahead of myself. Let's first talk about the whole premise of The Hobbit and how absurd it is. In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit. And so, you have this squat little man who is obsessed with his creature comforts. He has multiple pantries and kitchens in his house, in Bag End, under the hill.

[00:03:09]And he just wants to smoke his pipe and wish people good morning who pass by.

[00:03:13]But on one particular morning that our story starts, he wishes good morning to the worst possible person, a wizard named Gandalf. And I guess the lesson here is be careful who you wish good morning to.

[00:03:23]And so, because he does this, the whole plot is set up, and Bilbo, a squat hobbit who loves his food and pipes in his hole in the ground, is set on an adventure to go rescue an entire civilization from a dastardly dragon.

[00:03:36]This is absurd. The main thing that Bilbo thinks about in the first chapter is food and manners. He is giving out more food than he knows. And he's kind of angry because all the dwarves are not all that polite, even though he himself is not all that polite.

[00:03:50]Bilbo is thoughtful about cakes running short, about his pocket handkerchiefs, about second breakfast, and whether the dishes will get broken.

[00:03:59]And then you have the dwarves who arrive to discuss dragon slaying and ancient treasure.

[00:04:03]And Bilbo's primary concern is that he didn't get a chance to prepare enough food. There is just such a big divide between the two of these. And in one of my favorite sections of this chapter, and I might honestly say that a lot because there are a lot of great moments in these chapters, Bilbo reads the contract that the dwarves leave for him.

[00:04:23]And it states, "Thorin and Company to Burglar Bilbo, greeting. For your hospitality, our sincerest thanks. And for your offer of professional assistance, our grateful acceptance.

[00:04:36]Terms: Cash on delivery up to and not exceeding 1/14 of total profits, if any. All traveling expenses guaranteed in any event. Funeral expenses to be defrayed by us or our representatives, if occasion arises, and the matter is not otherwise arranged for. Thinking it unnecessary to disturb your esteemed repose, we have proceeded in advance to make requisite preparations. And shall await your respected person at the Green Dragon Inn, Bywater, at 11:00 a.m.

[00:05:02]sharp. Trusting that you will be punctual, we have the honor to remain yours deeply, Thorin and Co."

[00:05:09]Now, these small little funeral expenses that are just tacked on there like it's nothing. And again, I think everything that I'm going to say, I'm just going to keep reminding you that this was perfect for reading out loud. And I think Tolkien is writing this way so the parents can read this very dramatically and then sneak in a quick funeral expenses to be defrayed by us or our representatives, if occasion arises, and the matter is not otherwise arranged for. They can kind of say it in a whisper. It's perfect writing to read aloud. The humor comes here from the collision of two completely incompatible things. The cosmic grand epic and the mundane, boring hobbit hole.

[00:05:45]Now, the second thing that Tolkien does, and he's quite good at, and he's wildly funny in this, is his ability to name characters. Now, this is really important because there are authors who name their characters kinds of things like Jane Austen did, where she names five girls Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Kitty, and Lydia.

[00:06:01]It's great naming, but nothing is absurd about that. Meanwhile, Charles Dickens is over here giving his characters names like Martin Chuzzlewit, Uncle Pumblechook, Jerry Cruncher, and I actually had to look this one up, but a character from Oliver Twist is named Charlie Bates, whom Dickens refers to constantly as Master Bates.

[00:06:23]Like, come on.

[00:06:25]These names are absurd and hilarious, and Tolkien learned a thing or two from Dickens, and even a name like Bilbo has some kind of humor in it. But, aside from all that, the dwarves' names are Thorin, Balin, Dwalin, Fili, Kili, Dori, Nori, Ori, Oin, Gloin, Bifur, Bofur, and Bombur. Then, you have the trolls named William, Tom, and Bert. Just some English chaps hanging about. And to cap it all off, these three trolls are brothers that have the last name Huggins. So, the trolls' names are William Huggins, Bert Huggins, and Tom Huggins.

[00:06:54]The trolls having a last name at all is hilarious. The fact that it's Huggins is somehow funnier. Then, you have Bullroarer Took, who knocked the head off an orc named Golfimbul, and his head soared 100 yd away into a little gopher hole, and I'll give you a second to guess what sport was invented because of this.

[00:07:13]Tolkien was a linguist who spent decades crafting beautiful, serious names for his world, like Elrond and Galadriel and Samwise and Glorfindel and Sauron and Elrohir and Elladan, and then names trolls Bert, Tom, and William Huggins. Come [laughter] on. And speaking on trolls, their whole dialogue is legitimately knee-snapping knee-slappingly funny. They're apparently written in Cockney dialect, which I'm an American, so I don't really know anything about, but as an American, you can easily read this as a hillbilly accent.

[00:07:45]"Mutton yesterday, mutton today, and blimey if it don't look like mutton again tomorrow." said one of the trolls.

[00:07:52]"Blimey, Bert, look what I've copped."

[00:07:54]said William. "What is it?" said the others coming up. "Blimey if I knows.

[00:07:59]What are you?"

[00:08:01]"Bilbo Baggins, a burra a hobbit." said poor Bilbo, shaking all over and wondering how to make owl noises before they throttled him.

[00:08:09]"A burra hobbit." they said a bit startled. Trolls are slow in the uptake and mighty suspicious about anything new to them.

[00:08:16]"What's a burra hobbit got to do with my pocket anyway?" said William. "And can you cook him?" said Tom. "You can try."

[00:08:23]said Bert, picking up a skewer.

[00:08:25]The trolls' argument about how to cook the dwarves is played entirely for comedy. They can't agree on anything and they keep going in circles. And then Gandalf manipulates them by imitating their voices and keeping the argument going and it's a classic comedy of errors kind of structure.

[00:08:40]And this is sure to make kids cackle in their beds and roar with laughter. As I was reading this, I was laughing out loud. But the thing is is that the trolls are genuinely dangerous. They nearly kill everyone, but Tolkien never lets you forget how stupid and petty they are. And this, as I was saying before, is great for Tolkien and the parents to show lessons to kids that sometimes they don't have to fear things like trolls. You just have to outsmart them.

[00:09:05]And that's not very difficult. And a story like this cannot be funny unless you have a hilarious protagonist. And that we do.

[00:09:13]We are in luck because Bilbo is just a comedy of a mess.

[00:09:19]He's so absurd and all of his actions are so wild that I almost interpret the first two chapters of this hobbit of The Hobbit as a slapstick comedy. I mean, Bilbo's fainting episode is a good example, where he hears words "may never return" and then lets out a streak like a quote "whistle of an engine coming out of a tunnel."

[00:09:39]Then, after Bilbo reads the contract and decides he wants to go on the adventure, he runs out of the door almost with nothing in his possession. He has no money, no handkerchief, or hat, or walking stick. And so, the hero's departure that should and would, in a lot of movies, be played as this dramatic, you know, I'm going on an adventure kind of scene, is just played as a pure farce in The Hobbit. And dang did Peter Jackson miss this one when he filmed The Hobbit. It legitimately reads me reads to me like a Three Stooges sketch, but with just one person. And so, the Hobbit who was brought on as a burglar who does not have a pocket handkerchief has a first act of burglary, which is ironically picking someone's pocket, and that a pocket immediately yells at him. And this is something I honestly might make another video on, because I altogether missed this on my first read of the chapter.

[00:10:26]And I'm going through this again, I noticed that Bilbo grabs the purse from the pocket of the troll, and the pocket can speak, and it seems to have a mind of its own. The book says, "Ha! Thought he, warming to his new work as he lifted it carefully out. This is a beginning."

[00:10:41]It was. Troll's purses are the mischief, and this was no exception. "Ere! Who are you?" it squeaked as it left the pocket, and William turned round at once and grabbed Bilbo by the neck before he could duck behind the tree.

[00:10:54]The first burglary attempt ends with a purse from a pocket yelling at him. I mean, he is just not good at his job.

[00:11:02]And this is absurd. But then again, Bilbo is a comic hero in the classical sense, and his flaws, which are excessive comfort seeking, is also what makes him really lovable and funny. And yet another thing that Tolkien does that makes it so funny in these two chapters is his constant, and I mean, constant asides and fourth wall breaks. He breaks the fourth wall all over the place and gives parents an excuse to kind of inject their own breaks into the text and make things funnier if they want to try.

[00:11:29]"What is is Hobbit? I suppose Hobbits need some description nowadays. Yes, I'm afraid trolls do behave like that, even those with only one head each.

[00:11:40]Gets funny queer fits, but he is one of the best, one of the best, as fierce as a dragon in a pinch. If you've ever seen a dragon in a pinch, you will realize that this was only poetical exaggeration applied to any hobbit.

[00:11:53]He has so many in these chapters and all of them are just absurd and hilarious.

[00:11:57]These asides kind of create a sense of the storyteller who kind of finds his own material a little bit ridiculous and wants to let you in on the joke. And this is also amazing because it kind of makes you feel like an insider to the story. Like he's letting you in and be part of his journey. And this adds to the element of world building and storytelling.

[00:12:13]This is almost completely absent from The Lord of the Rings. And I think it's its absence kind of makes um is it's what makes that book feel so much more serious. I think I think it's absent actually. Now that I think about it, there may have been one or two small asides or fourth wall breaks, but there's nothing nothing like it is in The Hobbit. It's on every page in The Hobbit.

[00:12:35]And the funny stuff is even funnier in these chapters because it's paired next to dead serious things. And this is where I think Tolkien thrives. He makes this story both at the same time funny and serious. And the funny things get funnier because they're so grounded in the real world.

[00:12:52]Think about the dishwashing song only a few pages or even a few paragraphs before the Misty Mountain song. One that is intensely beautiful and moving and telling of the history of the dwarves and their escape from Erebor on the heels of the dishwashing song, which is just a masterpiece of comic misdirection. The dwarves sing about doing horrifying things to Bilbo's possessions and then do none of them.

[00:13:13]And then you have this whiplash between the two songs in the same evening and it's just a perfect comic technique where you make this thing much more serious because there was a joke that came before it.

[00:13:23]Tolkien knows exactly when to be funny and when not and when exactly to pull the rug out from you.

[00:13:28]And then the final thing I think that Tolkien is doing with his absurdist humor that I touched on before, but it's his ability to include the reader in the absurd. He ends chapter one with Bilbo laying his head on his pillow hearing the singing of Thorin in the next bedroom.

[00:13:42]Where he's singing about the Misty Mountains.

[00:13:44]And so this naturally should kind of lead the reader to asking to the reader to ask their kids in bed about whether they want to take this journey. And Tolkien includes the reader not just in the serious questions, but in the in the entirety of the story that he's talking about. Think about it. The plan to reclaim Erebor is genuinely insane when you lay it out. 13 dwarves, one wizard, and one hobbit who has never been on an adventure. And they're going to sneak past the dragon.

[00:14:10]This has to be where Rowling gets the idea of the Hogwarts motto, which is never tickle a sleeping dragon.

[00:14:15]But Bilbo is hired as a burglar based entirely off of Gandalf's recommendations. The dwarves are deeply skeptical. And I'm skeptical too. What did Gandalf see in Bilbo? And why did he even want him as a burglar in the first place? Maybe that's an essay for a different time though.

[00:14:31]But the contract is both legally precise and completely absurd at the same time.

[00:14:35]It accounts for funeral expenses, but gives Bilbo no real information about what he's signing up for.

[00:14:40]And when Bilbo asks sensible questions like what about the risks or out of pocket expenses or time required, he almost gets no useful answers.

[00:14:49]So the question you can pose to your kids that might make them go, you know, cackling into their sleep is would you travel with 13 dwarves and one wizard to reclaim a dwarven home that has tons of gold in it, but also has a sleeping dragon that is the last last great dragon?

[00:15:04]This is absurd and insane. And it's just funny enough to make me crack a smile.

[00:15:10]Tolkien's absurdist humor isn't just this decoration to make the story light and fluffy. I think it's more the method that he makes to kind of make us love these characters even more before the stakes get real. I am sure this book isn't going to kind of stick to the slapstick comedy for the entirety of this book, but for what it does just now, it makes me love these characters and want to take the journey with them because they would just be fun people to take a journey with. And I think that's what separates Tolkien from being just a guy who wrote a fun kids book because any writer can be funny.

[00:15:40]Actually, that's not true in any way.

[00:15:43]You kind of know what I mean though.

[00:15:44]Like plenty of writers at least are trying to be funny or maybe they really are funny, but very few writers can write in a funny way that makes the world that they're building feel more real and not less.

[00:15:55]Every absurd detail in these two chapters from the trolls' names to the talking purse to the funeral expenses tucked into the contract to Bilbo sprinting out of the door with a handkerchief.

[00:16:04]All of it makes Middle-earth feel somewhat more real because it's just so relatable.

[00:16:09]I've gone and forgotten my hat when I've been backpacking. I understand Bilbo's pain. It feels like a place where ridiculous things happen to real people, which is honestly just what real life feels like.

[00:16:21]And kids understand that. Tolkien doesn't talk down to them, which is what a lot of bad children's literature does.

[00:16:27]Kids know that the world is both terrifying and hilarious at the same time. And Tolkien is one of the rare writers who respects them about that.

[00:16:34]And I keep coming back to this image of a parent reading this out loud to a kid at bedtime because I think that is the truest version of what this book is really supposed to be.

[00:16:43]The parent doing the Cockney or hillbilly in my case troll voices is perfect. Whispering lines about funeral expenses like it's nothing. Asking their kids at the end of chapter one, "Would you go or would you leave your Hobbit hole this for second breakfast and would you leave your pocket handkerchief behind to go off with 13 dwarves to face a dragon?"

[00:17:04]And the kid is just cackling and laughing saying no and then when you leave the room, they think about it and they maybe say yes in a whisper.

[00:17:13]That is what Tolkien is doing underneath all the comedy. He's sneaking in the question that the whole book is really about. What does it take for comfortable, ordinary person to choose adventure?

[00:17:25]And he's doing it so gently and funnily that you almost don't notice that it's serious at all.

[00:17:30]And this is his real brilliance.

[00:17:33]I've always loved writing stories because it's just a way to get real meaning across. And someone who writes a good story can just inject whatever meaning they want and want into their own story. But comedy does this in a different way.

[00:17:46]I think some of the comedians that I've been listening to over the last few years are just so good because they are like Mark Twain-esque. They drop nuggets of truth in between lines of comedy and I honestly don't know if there's a better way to drop truth on a person than this. This is why scenes like this when I see these shoes it is so moving. Because this whole movie, Jojo Rabbit, has been an absurd comedy. And now I'm faced with something serious and I can literally feel the smile sliding off my face.

[00:18:16]I'm guessing that this is going to happen with The Hobbit a lot. I don't know for sure, but my best guess is that I would be willing to bet everything that I own on the fact that there are going to be truths that come out here out of nowhere that kind of slap me in the face.

[00:18:28]Where I will be laughing in one paragraph in the very next one kind of have an existential crisis. Because here's the thing about absurdist humor when it's done right. It doesn't undermine the serious stuff. It carries [music] it.

[00:18:39]The dishwashing song makes the Misty Mountains song hit even harder. Bilbo shrieking like a train whistle makes his eventual bravery more meaningful.

[00:18:48]Tom Huggins and William Huggins and Bert Huggins make the actual danger of the troll scene land with more weight, not less, because you've been laughing and then suddenly you realize wait, these idiots almost killed everybody and they can squash them into jelly.

[00:19:05]That whiplash of this book is the whole trick. And Tolkien knew exactly what he was doing every single step of the way.

[00:19:11]This was not a man loosely writing and getting lucky. This was a master of language and story who decided very deliberately to make you laugh because he knew that if he could make you laugh, he could make you feel everything else, too.

[00:19:27]And boy, am I ready to feel everything else in this book.

[00:19:30]So, make sure you subscribe to watch more of my videos as I talk about The Hobbit in my first-time read, where I'll probably just cry at some point in the novel, guaranteed. These are some of my favorite kinds of novels, and I cannot wait to keep reading. So, like the video, subscribe if you made it this far. You can also donate to a specific video. You can become a member, too, if you really want to support the channel in any way. And you can get early access to the videos and stuff like that by becoming a member. And as always, remember to look toward Númenor that was and beyond to Elvenhome that is and to that which is beyond Elvenhome and will ever be.

[00:20:00]I'll see you in the next one.